(CNN) The sentiment fueled debate on the Senate floor Thursday as Republicans refused to take up a Democratic bill that would have guaranteed a woman’s legal right to travel across state lines to obtain abortion care.
The Democratic bill, called the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022 was introduced earlier this week by Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. The bill would protect providers in states that support abortion rights from lawsuits to help immigrant women.
Murray, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said GOP representatives across the country “are already focused on eliminating the right to travel.”
“Let’s be very clear about what that means: They want to hold women as slaves in their states,” he said. “They want to punish women and anyone who can help them by using their legal right to travel within our country to get the jobs they want in another country. I hope that everyone really notices how extreme and how big and un-American it is. .”
Senator Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, argued that the Senate should reject the “extreme” bill because it would “give abortionists the freedom to have abortions if needed.” He also said that “it prevents the greed, to be honest, of companies that have woken up and find it cheaper to pay for abortions and abortion visits than maternity leave for their employees.”
Cortez Masto, who filed the petition to introduce the law, pointed to examples of lawmakers in states like Missouri, Texas and Arkansas who said they “want to pass bills to charge or prosecute women who travel for health reasons.”
What GOP lawmakers around the world say barring women from caring for children is “illegal,” he continued. “They oppose women, business and donors,” she said.
Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, who rejected the petition, told a Senate panel that the issue “is not about the right to travel and the right to a deeper level of health care, it is a right to life.”
“To be clear, no country has banned the movement among older women seeking abortion,” Lankford added. “No country has done that. Now I am confident that there are other people talking out there? Yes, but in the Senate there are 5,000 bills raised and how many will walk? As it is? In every parliament in the country and everyone in this group knows that.”
Lankford said Democrats are just trying to “burn” and “lift that if.”
Cortez Masto said, “All my rules are: Respect my country. We are a chosen country. We have made this decision as a government and if women want to go to my country to look for jobs, and my pageants want to provide those. Services, and employers want to help women move so stop let the nations do the same. “
CNN’s Ted Barrett provided the report.
